Skunk’d

It happened after Christmas Eve dinner at my mom’s house. I went out back with the dog, and as per usual, he spied some movement in a distant corner of the yard and gave chase. It’s almost always a rabbit. Sometimes it’s an opossum. Once it was a raccoon. This time, it was a skunk. 

There was a bit of a ruckus– a yelp, then loudly jingling dog tags, like maybe Obi had caught a small animal and was shaking the crap out of it. But I shone my phone flashlight and saw that he was actually doing the oddest thing: shoving and pushing his face into the grass and then sort of desperately rolling around. I was like, What the…?

Then, it hit me. 

It was not an odor so much as an assault on the senses. This was nothing like the Au De Skunk one encounters in the neighborhood or along the highway, which is annoying yet also, by comparison, completely benign. I did not for even one millisecond wonder: “Wait, is that a skunk, or is someone smoking weed nearby?” 

I was in a tear-gassed crowd a long time ago, and the reflex to “shut and duck”– as in, the immediate reaction to shut my eyes and mouth and duck away– was the same. This was like a toxic gas bomb made of percolating rancid onions, rotten eggs, and hydrochloric acid.

Glancing around for the source of this heinousness and worried about my pet’s welfare, I got close enough to Obi to realize that actually, he was ground zero. 

A friend of mine had once described his dog getting a direct hit from a skunk and they’d said, “It doesn’t smell at all like skunk, at first. It’s just… noxious. You gag.” 

That is what poor Obi was doing, gagging and drooling and wiping his snout on the lawn. “Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no..” I wailed. “What do I do with you?” Because I had no idea what to do. So I whipped out my phone and Googled, How do you get skunk spray off of a dog?  

About a gazillion hits popped up, but on scanning, the one that stood out as the most reliable was from a very practical Humane Society article. Basically, the recipe for the most effective dog de-skunking solution is: 

• 1 quart of 3-% hydrogen peroxide 
• 1/4 cup baking soda
• 1 teaspoon liquid dishwashing soap

I was relieved because it had already occurred to me how difficult it might be to find a commercial product for these purposes late on Christmas Eve. But these ingredients are all household staples, so I figured we were good. 

But how to wash him? It was December in New England. I wasn’t going to subject the dog (or myself) to an outdoor bath.  

At this point, the rest of the family must have heard my carrying on because they all came out into the backyard, exclaiming “Oh wow it sure stinks out here!” Most of them immediately turned around and went right back inside. Several people noted that it smelled like chemicals. Someone asked if it was possible that someone had thrown chemicals at the dog? I started to doubt my conclusion that it was skunk spray, so I Googled: Can skunk spray smell like chemicals? 

Again, a gazillion hits. But this article from Poison Control caught my eye, not only because the National Poison Control Center is a respected resource for medical professionals, but also because it was very well-written. Check out this opener: 

“If there is one constant in nature, it’s the evolutionary arms race between prey and predator. While some prey defend themselves by biting, stinging, camouflaging, trickery, or envenomation, skunks are equipped with a unique weapon—a pair of perianal sacs that secrete a smelly, oily liquid.” 

The evolutionary arms race between prey and predator. Awesome. In any case, between this article and others I learned that indeed, skunk spray is full of sulfur-containing chemicals, similar to those in the noxious gasses emitted by active volcanoes. And, skunk spray is a volatile liquid, meaning it dissipates into a gas almost immediately. So it IS chemicals AND a gas. And it’s potentially toxic, hence it’s under the purview of Poison Control: dogs can suffer temporary blindness, or worse. Worse is described in the veterinary literature, and this article from the American Veterinary Medical Association was the most helpful. Basically, the volatile sulfur-containing compounds (called thiols) can react with the iron in red blood cells, oxidizing the hemoglobin into a pathophysiologic form called methemoglobin that doesn’t effectively transport oxygen around the body. This is bad, and may need to be treated with blood transfusions, even. That’s a rare but known complication of skunk spray on dogs. 

I put that out of my mind and focused on the foul-smelling fur. The Poison Control article recommends the same 3-ingredient kitchen concoction for decontamination, and explains that the sulfur compounds themselves need to be oxidized in order to be neutralized, hence the hydrogen peroxide. And because skunk spray is an oily liquid, the dish soap helps get it off of animal fur. So, it’s kind of like using Dawn to get oil slick off of ducks. (I’m not sure why the baking soda is helpful, but it does sure make impressive foam.) 

So I shared the recipe with my mom. We decided we would drag Obi into their mud room/laundry room and wash him in there. Which we did, which sounds a lot easier than it was. My mom mixed up bubbly bowls of the magical solution with some warm water and we took turns holding doggo and scrubbing, especially around his head, snout, and neck. We did two rounds but it wasn’t possible to really rinse the stuff off of him very well. I didn’t really want my beige dog to have full highlights (or worse, bleached-out polka dots), and I was worried that his skin would get irritated. I had to get him into a bath somewhere. 

So I gathered my brood and the dog and we piled into my car. There was a lot of complaining from the kids (“He’s so stinky! It stinks in here! I don’t want to get in the stinky car!”) but we managed to get in and get home. 

This is where it got really hairy. Of course, I should have prefaced this story by mentioning that Hubby was away, because he usually is traveling with the team when fun things like this happen. Like, oh, hundred-year blizzards, kid’s illnesses, my illnesses… 

I was hesitant to bring Obi into the house and thus transfer the reek inside. But I didn’t want to leave him alone in the car any longer because he was mildly freaking out and, I didn’t want the fabric seats to reek forever. So I decided to just act very quickly. I had my 13-year-old son hold the dog on the leash out front while I rushed around the kitchen mixing up the Humane Society concoction. Then we brought Obi in and dragged him to our first-floor full bath, which has a walk-in shower. 

But this dog did NOT want to get into that shower. He had absolutely had it. So he proceeded to dog-flip-out, scraping his claws against the tiles, pulling as hard as he could, trying to hurl himself out of that bathroom. Me? NO WAY was I letting the dog loose in the house to spread oily sulfurous rotten egg stench all over. He likes to lie on the couch, on the beds…  So, even though I was still dressed for Christmas Eve Mass– wearing a nice black dress, black stockings, leather boots, the whole deal– out of desperation, I grasped him by his harness, got into the shower, and dragged him in there with me. 

Thankfully the shower head detaches so I was able to hold the dog and scrub, while my son held the water flow away from me, for the most part. We got in another round of de-skunking solution and then a very thorough rinse. There were towels in there thankfully, so we got him reasonably dry, and then with a little prayer, we let him loose. 

Off he went… under the kitchen table. He lay there for a long time, sad and exhausted. 

It’s been a week, and though it’s much, much better, he does still smell. As do our couch and beds. Thank goodness for plenty of scented candles, and Febreze…

Now when we go outside after dark, I check the yard. According to Mass.gov, the Striped Skunk (which has a cool Latin name, Mephitis mephitis) is the most common mammal in Massachusetts. They’re everywhere in suburbia, and apparently are great for gardens and lawns, because they eat flora-unfriendly varieties of beetles, grubs, and rodents. So if we see one, we’ll give it a wiiiiide berth, and leave it be.